October 24, 2010

If those officials were doing something wrong, I don't want to be right. For the WOA to think this would send a "bad message" to the student/athletes is just beyond belief. These men gave up a paycheck to a charity and honored one of their own who lost his wife to breast cancer. I would be surprised if this didn't blow up in the WOA's face and it should. Students and parents should inundate that commission with their thoughts about what is a "good message," what the officials did was honorable and right.

Hopefully one of the nationally prominent hot shot attorneys who enjoy getting involved in high profile cases will take a break from counseling the OJ's of the world and pitch in and help these refs fight the idiots.

Because they were under the impression that their league wasn't run by people with sticks up their rears?

The PFNOA says that there was no explicit "black whistles only" rule; Jobsworth Stordahl says the pink whistles violated a "norm", which suggests even he's not prepared to say it was stipulated in the books.

See, I can even sympathise with the idea that you don't want officials deciding among themselves that this week is "Wear a hat with a rubber trunk to support the elephants week", but the smart way to handle it is to issue a memo after the fact and claim authority that way, instead of looking like a bunch of sour-faced bureaucratic arses.

After reading through everything, it appears as if the commissioner heard about it before it happened, said they didn't follow procedure and warned them if they followed through they would be banned.

After that statement, I agree that the refs do need to be suspended. The commissioner made it black and white.

However, are you kidding me? Instead of the warning given, would it have killed them to make an exception for the game so that the refs weren't in defiance, and then sent a memo out being very clear of how to go about doing this type of thing in the future? Eh, its hard to argue against the rules as they are there for a reason and they need to be respected, but sometimes it can get pretty frustrating.